Copying shamelessly from @rhsjjack, five writers who helped form my worldview.
1.) Frank Herbert
2.) Isaac Asimov
3.) Dr. Seuss
4.) Grant Morrison
5.) Robert Frost
A weird list, but I'm a weird guy. Grew up on Dr. Seuss, read everything I could get my hands on by him. Graduated to Asimov and other golden age sci-fi. Dune literally changed the course of my life, hit me like a bomb. Morrison is the inheritor of Kirby's bombast and imagination. Frost started my love of poetry.
(Borrowed from bsky) Five writers who shaped an adult me
Daniel Quinn
Michael Moorcock
Ursula LeGuin
Octavia Butler
Haruki Murakami
Honorable mention goes to Walt Whitman, I was introduced to him by @msbellows .
HP Lovecraft was/is a HUGE influence but didn't define my thinking.
There IS a name which would be at the top of the list. I can't in good conscience name him, because there has to be a line drawn between how much of the artist you can divorce from the art and the evil in the artist. Edgar Allen Poe, not a great dude. HP Lovecraft, not so nice. But the writer to whom I am referring deserves to have their (beautiful, insightful, wise) works disappear and become forgotten.
A mediocre writer might get a shrug of disappointment from me. But the fact that I want to put the most influential person I have never met in the dustbin of history as an enemy of all that is good in humanity has genuinely aged me with grief and terror.
This monster put me on the ledge. Current events pushed me over.
π°πππ’ πΏπππππππ ~ πͺπ’πͺπ’π«π±π¬ βπͺπ¬π―π¦β’ πβMar 20, 2025I just listened to a short radio interview with one member of the Canadian folk duo who were pulled over and questioned separately by US state troopers.
Zero doubt: It's not safe to cross the border.
"It was after the state troopers who had pulled them over receded from view that Cassie said, 'Well that was wild. He asked me βwhich do I prefer, Canada or America?'
"Maggie, whoβd been taken to a separate cruiser for questioning, had been asked the same thing."
The interview isn't posted yet, but here's the story in print:
EDIT: Don't do the "scrub your phone" thing and store its contents in the cloud. Stay the hell away if you can. It is not safe.
Crapknocker
MostlyHarmless
Quester π€οΈπ
Stacey Cornelius π¨π¦